Songs to Test By
by PortalPanda
Summary: Songs to Test By is a series of fanfics inspired by the pieces on the Portal soundtrack. Just like the tracks each fic is a little different, featuring various characters and their thoughts and experiences throughout the games, based on the music of the games.
1. Science is Fun

It was a spark.  
A tiny flutter of something Chell couldn't quite place that ignited within her when she stepped through a portal. Usually it was quickly extinguished by a snarky comment from the ever scrutinizing GLaDOS, but sometimes it wasn't.  
Sometimes, when she was flying through the air or gliding across gel slicks, Chell found that it was hard not to throw her head back in a silent cheer of thrill. Sometimes it was hard not to become mesmerized by the detail and complexity of the test chambers. It was nearly impossible to walk out of one of those test chambers that you took one look at and thought _There is no solution to this you might as well just toss me to the turrets now_ , without a smile on her face.  
The feeling puzzled her to no end, because she hated Aperture. She hated how it smelled like neurotoxin and was covered in blinding white surfaces that reminded her of a mental hospital (which was where she would likely end up if she ever got out of here). She was haunted by the childlike voices of the turrets and the murals left behind by the last poor soul who had walked these halls before her.  
What she didn't realize was that she didn't hate Apertures' purpose. Some small, rebellious, mischievous part of Chell, the part of her that made her the crazy, mute, lunatic she was, loved testing. The things she had done in the testing tracks of Aperture were almost beyond belief, from floating in tunnels of energy to literally walking on sunshine. It was thrilling and fun and energetic and nothing made her feel alive more than nearly dying. Chell would never admit it, but she loved testing. How could she not when science was so much fun?


	2. Concentration Enhancing Menu Initializer

There was background music in the test chambers.  
Chell had done tons of tests before she had killed GLaDOS, but the only things she remembered hearing in those test chambers were the sounds of screeching metal and snarky comments from GLaDOS. Not that they sounded all that different.  
The music here was soft and energetic but, thankfully, different from the smooth jazz Chell had heard in the decaying test chambers from earlier. She actually enjoyed this music. Being trapped in a labyrinth of bright white rooms filled with nothing but silence and deadly science almost ensured that she would go insane (but she very well may already be insane. Not that there was anyone to vouch otherwise aside from GLaDOS, and Chell was sure that She would never do a thing like that.). This sound was positive and bright and almost happy and it provided a bit of a lighter atmosphere than the other test chambers had had. The music helped her focus on the tests and tune out GLaDOS' insults (if only it were louder). If Aperture was run by normal everyday people (not that Chell had ever met any of those) she wouldn't worry too much about why the music had been added. It was probably just an element intended to help her focus better. But Aperture wasn't run by people, and probably could very easily get you killed here, no matter how small the probably may seem.  
The question was: why would GLaDOS add music to the test chambers?  
It's wasn't like the AI was trying to please or entertain the test subject, She hated her with a passion that burned almost as hot as the incinerator, and Chell knew it.  
Maybe She wanted to distract Chell. Maybe She wanted her to get so caught up in the music that she wouldn't notice the turret around the corner. Or maybe She had just included it in the tests to keep her from thinking about escaping again. Or murdering homicidal she A.I.s who completely deserved it.  
At any rate, Chell took note of the music but tried not to let its purpose bother her. It didn't matter anyways.  
Soon she would be far away from these test chambers and the music that filled them.


	3. 9999999

The first thing Chell noticed when she woke up were the soft, dusty shafts of light drifting down from the ceiling of her room. The tiny specks of dust moved about so lazily it was if the world was in slow motion, and watching them only made Chell's drowsy mind want to return to sleep.  
The next thing she noticed woke her up a bit more. The cold.  
This room was so cold that Chell could see her own breath spiralling out from her lips and into the air beyond. Her first instinct was to shut her eyes and drift back into her deep dreamless slumber: she was tired (From doing what, She wondered dryly, sleeping?) and it wasn't as if she had anything more pressing to attend to. Right?  
No. Chell thought to herself as she nestled back down into bed. The frigid temperature that had once made her thoughts crisp and sharp now did nothing but make her want to sleep. For once she let it win.  
... Until a distant voice in the back of her head kept nudging her to get up ( _getupgetupgetupgetout_ ).  
But she was so comfortable here in her soft bed, and it was so cold outside of the blankets... ( _Cold like death, this entire place was cold like a morgue and she was not going to die in here_ ).  
The test subject blinked as the voice returned, pushing against the calm lull of sleep. Here... Where was here?  
Chell sat up and looked around, her crystal grey eyes focused and alert as they scanned the room for signs of danger. And quickly found one.  
There was a message on the small, outdated television screen that hung on the wall across from her bed. It's fluorescent message warned her that the facility was having some technical difficulties, but that wasn't what scared her; the facility was.  
A corner of the tiny screen harbored a small circular logo made of triangles, and as Chell saw it she leapt into the air like a gazelle.  
Just like that she was on her feet, alert, determined, and very angry. Her tenacious mind raced to connect the frayed memories from before her hibernation, sweeping through her mind like a wave.  
She was back in Aperture. It made no sense. Chell remembered killi- (er...) taking GLaDOS out of power. She had singlehandedly dethroned the queen of Aperture before being swept off her feet by the impact afterwards. This memory was especially blurred, but Chell remembered light. Not the fake synthesized light of the facility either; sunlight. She had felt pure sunlight, wind, and for a second her watering eyes had even caught a glimpse of the sky: the stratospheric blue of the horizon, dotted with wisps of clouds as white and fluffy as cotton.  
And then... and then there was a voice.  
Chell didn't remember what it had said (something familiar, something she had heard somewhere before) but she did remember the cold grip of whatever it had been that had dragged her away. She remembered that awful cold that was such a sharp contrast to the beautiful sunshine, and she remembered the painful snap of the braces in her knees. It was too much to bear and after that Chell had blacked out. And now she was here. Again.  
Bubbling hot anger swelled within the test subject's chest, and she knew that this time things were different: Chell wasn't just some random test subject who GLaDOS would attempt to kill merely because her services were no longer needed. She had escaped. Chell had finally won the freedom she had fought so hard for, only to have in snatched right out from under her minutes later.  
Now it was personal, and Chell planned on personally giving GLaDOS heck for trapping her again. Chell was going to do everything in her power to make Her regret bringing her back. If that didn't work Chell could just kill her again. It wasn't as if the test subject had anything left to lose.  
With her plan to destroy Aperture for the second time now in tow, Chell headed towards the door.  
That was when the sirens started going off.  
"Good morning. You have been in suspension for nine nine nine nine nine nine nine..."


	4. The Courtesy Call

Every morning at least one "courtesy call" went off somewhere in the relaxation wing.

Usually Wheatley found that this call was pointless, as hardly any of the sleeping test subjects ever actually got up out of bed to do what they were told. He like to pretend that this was simply because humans were quite lazy, but the core honestly knew better.

Aperture was empty, quiet, and lonely. The entire facility had become nothing more than a underground greenhouse (how was that supposed to work?), it's massive expanse now being invaded with little greens plants from another world. The only sign of life left.

Wheatley didn't really like the plants- they had never done anything to him- but everywhere they went they destroyed, cracking the walls, taking over the test chambers, breaking things apart with those root things that were (apparently) much stronger than they looked. To be quite honest though, Wheatley wouldn't have minded the plants nearly as much if they would've talked to him.

The little core had been alone in this wing of the facility for nearly twenty years. As far as he knew, he was the only working construct left for miles, perhaps in the entire facility! The loneliness had almost become overbearing, and one day it came to the point where Wheatley began to talk to himself.

The test subjects slept, the plants continued their invasion, and Wheatley continued to talk. The core was fairly certain that this was how things would always be.

Until someone opened the box.

That morning hadn't seemed any different than the 7,300 mornings before it, but it was. Wheatley was hanging from his rail, having a lovely chat with himself about how, soon, the little plants outside of the relaxation vault would get those pretty colors again and maybe that would brighten things up a little around here, when about ten thousand alarms went off.

In this case it hadn't been a someone who opened the box, but a something. A nuclear reactor kind of something.

In about two seconds flat the core was flying along his management rail at a dangerous speed, with his emotions fluctuating between sheer panic and excitement.

The facility was going to explode. Rather soon, from what Wheatley gathered. There wasn't really any way to put a positive spin on that, but, it gave Wheatley a very good reason to violate protocol and finally try to wake someone up. More importantly, it gave him an excuse to try and leave.

The only problem with this plan was that the relaxation center was enormous, large enough to hold ten thousand vaults, and (obviously) ten thousand humans along with them.

And Wheatley didn't have very much time to find one (one out of ten thousand) that was alive.

The core decided to eliminate sectors of the grid by how badly they were damaged, thus eliminating hundreds of humans from his search in a matter of minutes. Or, at least, that had been his plan. Wheatley followed that for about an hour until, in one sector that was particularly damaged, something caught his optic.

Next to the door of one of the vaults, there was color. Wheatley screeched to a halt on his rail and backtracked to the door. There, smeared on the panels that had once been white, there was writing.

 _Both Dead and Alive_  
 _Until Someone Opens the Box_

Whether it was those powerful words, or his programming, or something else entirely, something made Wheatley simultaneously want to open this door and get as far away from it as possible. Just being near this door made Wheatley feel an almost foreboding sense of fear, as if there was a great monster locked away behind it, and him opening the door would unleash it. His programming was starting to give him fits, reminding him that waking any if the humans for anything but their exercises was absolutely unacceptable, that it could kill them and it could very easily get him killed.

But there was also something else.

Some part of Wheatley felt drawn to this door and the words written beside it. They both meant that he had the power to make a difference- to save someone's life- and to someone who had been powerless and lonely for the past twenty years, that sounded amazing. Whoever was behind this door could help him, could become his friend, could talk to him, explore the facility with him, and escape with him.

What was wrong with that?

With one long (simulated) deep breath, Wheatley opened the box.


	5. Technical Difficulties

Chell landed hard after the floor of the test chamber shattered beneath her.  
She silently chastised herself as she got up (she was unscathed, thanks to the long-fall boots), shaking her head as she listened to the ramblings of the core above her.  
Here she had been so close to having a portal gun in her possession, only to lose it due to her own stupidity. She should have known better by now. After everything she had been through she should have known better than to trust even the floors of this place. Especially a floor full of splintered panels and sparking machinery. A fall like that could have easily killed her, and just the thought of death via rotting architecture (after managing to take out the queen of Aperture) was enough to make Chell turn bright red. Now she would have to find the portal gun, and, assuming it still worked, a way back to the top of the test chamber.  
She needed to be more careful.  
Tuning out her thoughts and the voice of the bumbling core above her, Chell began to move forward. She had landed in an area of the facility that was badly damaged by invading nature (though her handiwork may have also had something to do with it...). This chamber was covered in plants, and even had standing pools of water on the floor... but that wasn't what stood out to Chell.  
What stood out to her were the giant murals at the end of the room.  
Five massive sections of panels lined the walls of this room, each adorned with life sized illustrations of... something. Chell immediately recognized the style of the images as belonging to her mysterious helper, who had left warnings and directions for her during her last trip through Aperture. Though she had never seen any murals this big before.  
Chell's haste to escape began to ebb away as she slowly made her way across the room.  
The first panel depicted what Chell immediately recognized to be GLaDOS, surrounded by a group of scientists. GLaDOS appeared to be calm in this painting, and was using some of Her maintenance arms to perform different tastes around the facility. Beneath her the scientists were staring in awe and amazement, some even smiling as they looked up at Her.  
Though Chell already knew that that hasn't lasted.  
And next panel confirmed her theory. Here the scientists were illustrated as frantic and full of fear, either gasping for air or screaming. Above them GLaDOS was unmoving and uncaring as they dropped to the floor.  
Chell paused as she examined one of the figures in the bottom right corner of the panel. This figure too was panicking, with their arms raised (almost in surrender) and their legs positioned to run. However, this figure didn't have a face like the rest of the scientists. Instead their head was covered with an erratic orange scribble. Next to the scientist without a face sat a companion cube.  
The first thing Chell noticed in the third panel was herself. The artist had painted her as graceful and proud, her posture erect as she glared at GLaDOS and pointed the ASHPD at Her. Chell couldn't help but notice that the illustrator had also given her a little extra height so she stood eye (optic?) level with Her. Here GLaDOS was offering Chell cake, but she wouldn't so much as look at it. Once again an orange faced figure with a cube stood in the bottom left corner of the mural.  
In the fourth panel GLaDOS hung limp from the ceiling like a dead snake. Bright blue-green sparks rained down from Her chassis, and Chell was nowhere to be seen. The faceless figure raised their arms in a silent cheer, holding Chell's portal gun above their head like a trophy.  
The last mural was dedicated solely to Chell, which made her stop dead in her tracks. The artist had painted her as an angel. Her eyes were closed as if she was asleep, but she seemed to stand. Her head was ringed with a scribbled white halo, and the gorgeous blue of the sky shone above her head.  
This was a lot to process all at once. Chell's mind raced as she looked at all the murals, trying to connect the pieces and giving herself a massive headache in the process.  
GLaDOS had been build by scientists that She later murdered. Chell assumed that the artist was one of them. Somehow the artist had come to know Chell throughout her journey, and, judging by the depictions of her, they had come to greatly admire her. Chell understood that much.  
What she didn't understand was why the artist had painted themselves without a face and with a companion cube. Or how they had come to know her.  
Or why she was back in Aperture, staring at murals when she was supposed to be on the surface like the paintings showed.


	6. Overgrowth

Aperture had once been a place full of noise.  
Wheatley could remember the days before the humans had disappeared, and his favorite memories of those days were the ones full of sound: the scientists cheering as they finally got something to work, people laughing and socializing at parties, secretaries humming jazzy little tunes as they returned to their desks with fresh cups of coffee.  
Even after those sounds had left the facility there hadn't been complete silence.  
Back then, the other AI of the facility had still been functioning, and it was very common to hear nervous chatter about the humans returning or cries for help as one passed through the halls.  
Wheatley also heard Her voice more than a few times. All of the AI were terrified of Her, but She seemed too busy pursuing the handful of humans that remained in the facility to bother them.  
At one point, Her voice had almost become comforting compared to the deadly silence that was overtaking the facility; until one day it too stopped.  
All that had remained after that was the pulse of the facility: that musical sort of heartbeat that signified life in Aperture. Wheatley had once listened as the sound seemed to radiate out from the very walls of the facility, but without Her it seemed that the facility itself was dying.  
Now the facility was completely silent, a massive, empty tomb for humans and machines alike.  
The only thing brave enough to break the silence were a few invading raindrops.  
To Wheatley even their dissent sounded sad and mournful.


	7. Songs to Test By: Music Notes

This story is going to be continued in a new format in a new book called Songs to Test By: Music Notes. The new book will analyze different aspects of the music and explain what they tell us about the characters of Portal (just as Songs to Test By has done), but it will not explain these things through story; it will be strictly about the music, telling you when and where to listen and what to listen for within each track. I think it will clarify the messages within the music much better than this format has. This new format should also be much easier to write which will allow me to update it much more frequently. I'm hoping I can do weekly updates with this new format once I really get it started some time next year (2016).

I want to say thank you to everyone who has read this story. I hope you've enjoyed Songs to test By, and I hope you'll enjoy the new version too.


	8. Ghost of Rattman

Note: This chapter is a little dark. Sorry!

Aperture was full of ghosts.

Chell didn't notice them at first, but as she was dragged down deeper and deeper into the depths of the facility she began to see evidence of them everywhere she turned. Their graves were marked by stains and scribbles on the once white panels of the walls. Chell heard their screams mingle with the sound of screeching metal as facility rearranged itself; she heard their cries for help as she watched the defective turrets burn.

Sometimes if she focused hard enough she could them standing on the spot where their blood stained the floor. For the most part they were still, but their eyes would always follow her. Chell knew to stay away from where they stood. If she got too close they would fall through the floor, screaming. The portal gun (the same one she held in her hands. It had been theirs, once) would drop from their hands and they would plummet down, all while grasping for Chell and looking up at her with desperate, wild eyes as they fell.

But Chell couldn't see all of Aperture's ghosts.

There was one ghost that wove through the underbelly of Aperture beyond the test subject's sight. This ghost always eluded Chell, but it protected her, and did so without frightening her.

This ghost built her shelter inside the facility: safe little alcoves tucked into the walls of the facility, where Her cameras couldn't reach. The walls of these cozy dens were covered in messages and vibrant murals (the bright oranges and blues the artist used were always a refreshing sight after spending so much time in the blinding white test chambers), and the floors were always littered with cans of food and jugs of water. The same ghost left her radios that tuned out the horrible screeches and screams of the facility with wonderful music.

The dens and the gifts inside them helped keep Chell sane throughout her trek through Aperture. At the rate GLaDOS was testing her, Chell doubted she would be able to last very long at all without the dens and the person who made them, but the longer she remained in Aperture, the more Chell began to wonder if it really was a ghost.

Author's Note:

Today, on January eleventh of 2016, Songs to Test By is one year old! Yea!

I wanted to post an update today to celebrate the first piece of writing I posted online, and to thank everyone who has read and enjoyed this series. I haven't forgotten about you, I promise.

This chapter stumped me last year (which is why it's short and honestly not that great), and when Pieces became more popular I decided that I would work to complete it instead. I'm honestly not sure that this series will ever be completed as the entire thing would end up being 70-80 chapters in length (a lot longer than Pieces, which is going to take me about two years to complete), but I do plan on continuing this series once Pieces in finished (either late this year or early next year). This series was always pretty easy to update and I loved writing it. I hope you've enjoyed reading it, and I hope that I'll have more of it for you to read soon.


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